It's one of those ideas where the elevator pitch either sounds utterly insane or pure genius (or, admittedly, maybe both): Mash up a grown-up Calvin and Hobbes with Frank Miller's hard-boiled noir detective storytelling. That's what writer David Pepose and artist Jorge Santiago Jr. hoped to pull off with their comic Spencer & Locke, which launched to critical acclaim earlier this year and wrapped its first four-issue mini-series this month.

Well, pull it off they did, so well that Hitman producer Adrian Askarieh and Prime Universe Films have optioned the comic to develop it into a feature film. Pepose, a comic book journalist and reviewer for several years with Newsarama, sat down with SYFY WIRE at San Diego Comic-Con to talk about the surreal and sudden experience.

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"It's a very surreal thing, to be sure. I feel like Spencer & Locke has blown up more than my wildest dreams," Pepose says in the video below. The writer also thanks fans, retailers, and reviewers for "rallying around" their series.

Askarieh and Pepose both shop at The Comic Bug in Los Angeles, and the store owner, Mike Wellman, recommended the series to Askarieh.

"The thing that really impressed me about Adrian was how taken he was with not just the source material but the tone," Pepose says.

Watch the full interview below, including Pepose's crowning moment as a comics fan, and check out Spencer & Locke, published by Action Lab in stores and on Comixology now. Also see a preview of Pepose's comic in the gallery below.